


One Last Thing (Before We Start the Final Face-Off)

by Erisden, Hexiva



Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Character Death, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Revenge, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 06:26:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17802746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erisden/pseuds/Erisden, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexiva/pseuds/Hexiva
Summary: After Farouk's trial goes off without a hitch, David visits him in his cell to deliver his personal verdict."How will you do it, I wonder?” Farouk asks. His manner is impassive, but inside his heart is racing. He doesn’t want to die - but this, the fear, the adrenaline racing through solid, human veins - it is good to him. “A blow to the head - that would be dangerous. You might risk destroying the crown before you destroyed me, and thereby setting me free. You could use your powers, of course. But, I think, that would be a little too… clean. Unsatisfying, after all these years. Perhaps a knife, then? Very visceral. Intimate. How easy will it be, I wonder, for you to look me in the eyes and kill me?”





	One Last Thing (Before We Start the Final Face-Off)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Placebo's song "Infra-Red."

David sits cross-legged on the bed. Around him, the covers lie settled, as perfect as they were when Cary had shown him to the room. There’s no use for sleep at a time like this, when eagerness settles, so comfortably and so resiliently, in the dip of his collarbone and the curve of his throat. He  _ can’t _ sleep. Not when Farouk is so close - and so  _ powerless. _ Not when he’s on the brink of stopping him once and for all. 

With a soft breath, he lets himself relax, his awareness floating away from his body. When he stands, he looks back at the bed and sees himself still sitting, as still and as calm as ever, his hands rested over his knees. Satisfied, he leaves himself to meditate. As he walks, he reaches out with his mind. It gropes, like fingers, through the walls, around bends of hallways and doors of metal and the presence of Division Three’s staff and soldier children. They feel the way everyone feels: like little blips in his consciousness, ever present and always there, in the back of his mind, for him to brush when he needs them.

But Farouk - his presence is overwhelming. David knows he can’t use his powers now, bloodied and locked up in the halo, but there is a moment, a split second, where he worries that maybe the halo doesn’t work on someone like him. It’s gone soon enough, replaced with his resolve and anger. no. Farouk is only psychic. He’s only a mutant, just like him. He can be stopped just like everyone else.

The air before him shimmers, and his surroundings twist into darkness, only to fade back in a moment later to the image of the inside of Farouk’s cell. In front of him sits Farouk, cross-legged on the ground, his eyes shut like he’s focused intently on a thought.

He takes a step forward. “I’ve waited long enough.”

Farouk opens his eyes, looking up at him. His face is still bruised and beaten where he hit him. “David,” he says, smiling slightly. “I wondered when you would come to find me, my dear. _Ich nehme an, du bist hier, um unseren Tanz zu beenden?”_ _I assume you’re here to finish our dance?_ He doesn’t stand up. “How will you do it, I wonder?” he asks. His manner is impassive, but inside his heart is racing. He doesn’t want to die - but this, the fear, the adrenaline racing through solid, human veins - it is good to him. “A blow to the head - that would be dangerous. You might risk destroying the crown before you destroyed me, and thereby setting me free. You could use your powers, of course. But, I think, that would be a little too… clean. Unsatisfying, after all these years. Perhaps a knife, then? Very visceral. _Intimate._ How easy will it be, I wonder, for you to look me in the eyes and kill me?”

David shakes his head.  _ I don’t care,  _ he tells himself, because he knows that, in that crown, Farouk can’t hear a thing he thinks.  _ I don’t care, I don’t  _ **_care!_ **

But Farouk only smiles ruefully. He doesn’t need to read David’s mind to know what he’s thinking. “This may surprise you,” he continues, “but I’ve never done it. Your woman, your Syd - I told her you were a psychopath.  _ Unbarmherzig. _ I do not think that is true - do you? I wonder if you are capable of this. It is one thing to strike out at me when I am an enemy, a fellow warrior, facing you in battle. It is another thing entirely to butcher a captured man. But if that is what you intend to do, I will not stop you. I will not fight. We both know it would be pointless, my dear.”

That Farouk doesn’t truly think he’s crazy brings David an unsettling sort of acceptance. Like knowing there’s one person in this world who thinks he’s just a person, just a person. Then again - he could be lying through his teeth. It doesn’t matter either way.

"No,” says David. “No. You’re only saying that to try and throw me off. It’s not going to work." 

David knows he can squash Farouk like a bug. Like the parasite like he is, like the  _ shit beetle _ he is. And what’s Division Three going to do about it, once they find out Farouk’s already been dead in his little crown harness for hours? They’ll blame him, of course, and tell him he should’ve told them before he’d done it. But they already tried to kill Farouk once, and they failed, and David isn’t about to sit around waiting for them to try again. Farouk’s voice is already grating on his last nerve, ringing around in his head like painful bullets.  _ Only _ Farouk was ever capable of that, and apparently, he’s capable of that even now, imprisoned and deprived of his powers.

David tosses his head to the side. He doesn’t move any closer, as though the distance will shield him from Farouk’s words. "You deserve this. You’ve deserved it since the moment you burrowed yourself into my mind and made me your home. Do you really think, after all this time, that I care whether or not you fight back? This is your fault." 

“Is it?” Farouk asks, shaking his head. “Your father set off the chain of events that led us here. Not me. But perhaps.” He drops into Farsi, wondering whether David will understand, whether he will read Farouk’s mind to find out. _ “I wonder what you would have done in my place.”  _ English again. “Your friends may forgive you for killing me. But Division Three will not. They have plans for me, you see. What will you do when they find me dead? Flee? Or fight?” His voice is gentle.

In another circumstance, from another man, that might have been comforting. He continues. “She told you what you become. What you could become. Legion,  _ der Gedankenkiller.”  _ He smiles. “You and I - the parasite and the plague. That is what she called it, yes? The plague.” He leans back, bracing himself on his hands, and switches to Farsi again.  _ “Your father would have said that by killing me, you will become that. Me, I do not think it is so simple. _ But it will, I think, hurt you.” He smiles, slightly. “An occupational risk of having a conscience, my dear.”

“You’re wrong,” David says, but there’s uncertainty in his voice, and Farouk can hear it. David knows what Farouk is talking about:  _ Legion, the Worldkiller.  _ He understands that much. What he doesn’t understand is how he would become it. How could he, if he has no idea, no desire, to become a danger to this world? Innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this fight, dead - because of him. That was what Future Syd has told him:  _ this thing kills everyone. _ "You don’t know anything."

_ How dare you, how dare you!  _ whisper the voices in his head. Farouk’s got nothing on him. No way in hell is David going to let him talk him out of anything, when he’s already powerless. David’s waited a long, long time for this. Now, he’s going to get his revenge.

But he can’t stop thinking. Division Three - they’ve never trusted him. Clark thought he was lying since the very beginning, and the Vermillions have banded up against them more than once. Working together isn’t the same as trusting.

"I’m not going to become you,” David says. “I know who you are.”

“Do you?” Farouk asks, softly.

“I know  _ what _ you are,” David says, stepping closer, “and I’m not going to be like you, ever." He gets down on one knee, on Farouk’s level now.  _ Just a person,  _ he tells himself.  _ You’re just a person. Everyone thinks that. Not just Farouk.  _ “Killing you is a mercy. I don’t care what plans Division Three has for you. They don’t need you, and they’ll see that once I’m through with you." 

“And what if they don’t?” Farouk says softly. He leans forward, helping to close the distance between the two of them. “Look at you. Even now you’re talking of mercy. You must convince yourself that cutting me down will be an act of kindness, because cruelty sickens you. You’re not ready for this, my dear.” 

A sudden impulse seizes Farouk, and he reaches out, slowly, to put his hand on David’s shoulder. David feels it like a fire, hot and cold and burning at the touch. “Are you still afraid of me?” he asks, his voice quiet. “Even like this?”

It feels as though the question only magnifies the pain in David’s shoulder. He flinches back and falls to one side, barely suppressing a cry. To be afraid means to lose his sense of confidence. To be afraid means turning tail and never coming back again, means fleeing the confrontation. If David knows one thing for certain, it’s that he’s not  _ afraid. _

And how  _ dare _ Farouk think that he can cause him to be afraid.  _ You’re stronger than that; one touch isn’t nearly enough. _

He lifts his hand, but doesn’t touch Farouk. In an instant, he sends a thought out - a cold, icy shot of the telepathic power he’s learned to control so well, this far. Farouk’s fingers and forearm freezing where they hover. “Don’t touch me." It’s all he can do not to yell, voice trembling with the effort. "I’m not afraid of you.  _ You’re _ afraid of  _ me. _ I know you are. Deep down, in that cold, tainted heart of yours, you know what I can do to you. And you’re scared."

Farouk laughs, shutting his eyes for a moment. He shifts against his telekinetic bonds. “You are very powerful. It would be ironic, would it not, if we were both afraid of each other?” His eyes open. “You can’t even touch me. Will you really be able to kill me?” His tone is still calm and even.

But then he slips into German, and it takes on a vicious edge.  _ “To sink the knife in and let the blood stain your hands? _ It is a messy business - butchering the human animal.” He leans back, bracing himself on his free arm. “Does it make you feel better, to know that I am afraid, in this moment?” he asks. His hypnotic brown eyes are intense, staring deep into David’s pale blue eyes. _ “I do not want you to fear me.” _ Farsi.

David knows that Farouk is just trying to get him off balance. One little moment of weakness, and he’ll catch him falling, and then … then, he’ll never get what he wants.

_ Who are you kidding, kid,  _ the voices in David’s head say. _ Farouk’s always had a way to make you pause when you least expected it!  _ David ignores them.

He lets the freeze crawl up Farouk’s arm, up and up, until it rests at his shoulder. O _ h, don’t worry,  _ he thinks.  _ It’ll be like an old friend. _ Since, of course, Farouk knows the extent of his powers. He’s trying to trick you; trying to get you to believe in his lies. And maybe it  _ does _ make David feel better that Farouk is afraid of him in this moment. He should be. He should have always been afraid of him.

"It makes me feel better,” he says instead, “to know that I’m better than you." He curls his fingers, lets the freeze move down Farouk’s side and clutch at the edge of his ribs.

Farouk’s breath catches in his throat. David’s powers hold him imprisoned, and he understands exactly how helpless he is. He’s afraid of dying. He’s never felt more alive. 

David continues. "I don’t need to touch you to kill you.” He meets Farouk’s eyes. “I’m going to keep this up. You’re going to feel it go straight up into your heart. Do you know how it feels to have your heart stop beating in your chest?” 

_ “Do you know what’s funny?” _ Farouk asks, his pulse pounding in his ears. He doesn’t bother with English or German or French. His native language has always been the language of truth to him.  _ “I think, at this moment, I feel more compassion for you than you do for me.”  _ He laughs.  _ “I suppose I am not the psychopath I have been accused of being, after all.”  _ Part of him wants to beg for his life, but he knows it won’t do any good - after all, how often had people begged him for mercy? If he has nothing else left, at least he will die with his dignity intact.

_ “Will you stay until it is over?” _ he asks. He doesn’t say it, but the words hang in the air between then, in Farouk’s mind where David can, and does, so easily read them: _ I don’t want to die alone. _

David’s brows flinch up, and the freeze, which he had begun to move through Farouk’s abdomen, stops. When he had come here, he’d never intended to touch Farouk’s mind. He never even wanted entertain the possibility of having to listen to him. And yet here he is, listening in, like a deeply ingrained instinct, on Farouk’s thoughts, if only for translation. But in listening to that translation, he feels the emotions around the words, too: a sadness. He’s not sure if it’s Farouk’s or his own. He’s not sure it even matters.

"You held me prisoner in my own mind,” he says. “You tricked me. You tried to kill me. And you’re asking if I’ll  _ stay _ with you until it’s over?”

“Yes,” Farouk says, very quietly. It’s all he says.

David’s nostrils flare. Farouk looks so helpless, so unprotected, so open to attack. Is this the first time he’s been so vulnerable in his life? And yet - David hates that he’s feeling  _ any _ sort of sympathy towards the man who tormented him all his life. "Bullshit,” he snaps, as though getting angry will lessen his own emotion. "You  _ deserve  _ to die alone." 

Farouk swallows. It’s getting harder for him to breathe already, his breath just a little shallower for being restrained.  _ It’s strange,  _ he thinks, _ to hear it said out loud, what David thinks of me. _

_ “Do you remember the day you tried to take your own life?” _ he asks, still in Farsi. He’s well aware that he’s playing with fire, but he can’t make himself stop. Not now. Not when all he has left is his words.  _ “I thought I could talk you down then, too. Even when I was inside your mind, I couldn’t stop you. But I still saved your life. Didn’t you ever wonder where the noose went? I destroyed it.”  _

He doesn’t say that David owes him; he knows David won’t believe him. He’s no longer sure that he’s still trying to talk David out of killing him, or if he is simply trying to prove to David that he is human.

The images flash through David’s mind as though it had all happened yesterday. The pills. The voices. The noose, bright orange in the darkness of his apartment, the darkness of his room. The covers shut, to block out anyone who might be watching. And the voices, the voices:  _ stop it, what are you doing?! - Don’t do that, get it out of here, we need you! - COWARD! _

But there had been one voice, gentler, more gradual, less fragile, powerful - very much  _ there, _ where David’s own voice hadn’t been. That voice, certain, but almost pleading.  _ You and I. Don’t leave me. _

Just what he’s saying now.  _ Don’t leave me. Stay until it’s over.  _

Farouk takes a deep breath, studying David’s eyes. When David looks back on this, Farouk wants him to remember this as the first time he killed another person of his own free will.

He’s afraid that David will remember it as the day he crushed a venomous spider under his boot.

The freeze falters. David’s voice comes in a whisper, rasping. "No. That wasn’t you." It couldn’t be. His own powers had saved him, or  _ something. _ Farouk was never a lifesaver, Farouk had never helped anyone in his miserable life. He’d saved  _ himself.  _ "You’ve - You’ve never done anything good for my life." 

Farouk takes a deep breath.  _ It’s working,  _ he thinks. He didn’t think it would. He takes a careful step forward, pressing against his telekinetic bonds, but not fighting them.

_ “It was me,” _ he says, gently.  _ “To see you like that, desperate and striking out at me the only way you knew how … it frightened me. I knew you didn’t deserve to die.” _ He shakes his head.  _ “Right and wrong, good and evil … I’m not so sure there is a difference. But I understand the concepts. La moralite. Ethics. But then I - ”  _ He presses his free hand to his chest. _ “I felt it. Do you know, my dear, where you end and I begin? Where the lines are drawn between your dark side and my conscience?” _

_ Because I don’t _ . 

Again, the words hang in the air between them. He doesn’t need to say it out loud. He thought it would be an escape. David’s body, nothing but a convenient place to hide. But it was more than that - two minds in one body, for so long.

_ Am I still the same man who died by Charles Xavier’s hand?  _ he wonders.

“What I am,” David insists, “and what you are, are two completely different things.” He remembers the patched memories, the excuses, the ways his mind talked itself into doing what Farouk wanted him to. How Sydney would have been stabbed if he didn’t team up with Lenny to help her. He remembers the intensity of it all … that had paved the way to something new. He  _ has _ a dark side … but it’s Farouk’s. It’s all Farouk’s, not his own. It has to be. Farouk had wriggled his way into his mind and taken control once.

And he won’t let it happen again. He knows what’s happening now. He knows  _ everything. _ He knows that he and Farouk will never be alike. "We’re not the same,” he says. “Just because you were inside me for my whole life doesn’t mean we’re the same." As long as David keeps a grip on himself, he can still end this. And he  _ will _ end this. "You know the difference, but you chose wrong. You chose evil. You chose death, destruction, feeding off other peoples’ powers, when they don’t do a single thing to deserve it." He takes a step to the side, gaze blazing. "I’d say that pretty much cancels out you 'saving my life’." 

Farouk is out of control for the first time in a very long time and it’s exhilarating. “A choice between living and dying … is no choice at all,” he says. “Isn’t that what all living things want? To survive? Your father murdered me. And to survive, I had to … feed.” The hunger slips through into his voice, the desperation he felt, the need to take and take until there was nothing left of David. He sucks in a shaky breath. “I will not apologize for choosing life.”

And if he did, he wonders, would it make a difference? Would David even believe him? It’s so difficult, working like this, trying to make sense of David’s mind without access to his telepathy. He feels blind and deaf, the world around him strangely thin and unreal. 

_ “Do you remember,”  _ Farouk asks, _ “the first time you saw me - saw me, and knew what I was? You asked me …  _ ‘What am I without you?’” He smiles. _ “Soleil et lune. Parasite et fléau.” Sun and moon. Parasite and plague. _ His smile falters. “After all these years,” he asks, in David’s own language, “is this really how it will end?” Dying in a tiny, neon-lit cell, by the hand of the only person he’s ever really cared about. An ignominious end for the King.

Well. He did tell David that love was a deadly fungus. He should have listened to his own advice. 

David is filled with loathing. "Yes. This is how it will end. With you, broken and powerless.” With Farouk, shackled and trapped in his spiked crown of iron, his powers subdued … his words, crawling their way through the air of the dark cell, scraping, grating on David’s ears. “And when Division Three finds your body, they’re not going to get mad. They’re going to celebrate, because the evil will be gone. Eliminated. We spent all this time looking for you. They told me you’d be terminated when we found you." 

He cracks his wrists, imagining the sound to be Farouk’s own bones. This  _ is _ where it ends. "Just shut up. I know now. I’m better without you - better than I ever was. You held me back." With a lift of his hand, he lets the freeze creep up Farouk’s abdomen again, moving it to the very outer layers of his skin. It spreads up his chest, up to his collar - doesn’t yet bury into his chest, doesn’t yet rush up into his head. Not yet.

_ You’re a good person, _ David tells himself.  _ Killing Farouk doesn’t make you bad.  _

"Any last words?” The next words are sent into Farouk’s mind:  _ you piece of shit? _

A shiver runs through Farouk’s body, and he reaches out automatically when David’s mind touches his. He can feel David’s hatred, a fire he could warm himself by. He puts his free hand to his frozen chest, imagining what it will be like to feel his lungs and his heart freeze. His breath is shallow again. It’s strangely comforting, feeling David’s thoughts again.

In his mind, he throws open all of the doors, and lets his thoughts, his memories, his emotions flood out into David’s mind, where he can see them. Every vile thought, every cruel action - every moment of kindness - he gives it all to David. With the halo on his head, he’s not strong enough to overwhelm the younger man, so he doesn’t try. He wants David to know him, and he’s not sure if it’s because he thinks it might stop him, might implant some tiny seed of sympathy - or if he just wants someone to remember him. After all, this is not so different from what Xavier saw that led him to think Farouk needed to be killed. Is there any real possibility that it will stop David?

“David,” he manages. _ “Joonam. _ I love you. Please don’t - ” And then the freeze sinks into his lungs and silences him, and he’s glad, because the King does not beg. 

_ "No!”  _ Panic bursts through David. His fist clenches and jerks up, and he crushes Farouk’s lungs - sends the blast up his neck, his throat, tearing through his skull. The halo shatters - there’s a moment of pain in Farouk’s mind, and then blackness, silence,  _ finally, finally gone. _

But he doesn’t feel gone. Not to David. David had opened himself up and taken him in, and he feels himself waver worse than he’s ever wavered before; feels his eyes prickle at the edges, feels the cold chill of fatal love still lingering at the edges of his consciousness. Feels the emptiness now, as he trembles, suddenly alone in the cell, looking down at Farouk’s lifeless body which, seconds before, had held life. Farouk - his mortal enemy, his lifelong parasite, his deep-rooted companion, the one who loved him even when faced with his own death.

_ He’s gone, dead.  _ David tells himself.  _ You got your revenge, and it’s all because you didn’t let anyone else tell you what to think, what to do … didn’t let them hold you back. _

He lifts one shaking hand up to his temple, unaware that it shakes at all. Who has time to think about that when, really, it’s the knowledge that Amahl Farouk is finally dead, at long last, that matters.

David turns, feeling powerful, strong, and lonelier than ever.

_ It’s what he deserved. It’s what he deserved.  _


End file.
